I’ve nearly finished dumping everything perishable in my refrigerator and freezer, which stopped working last night. Yes, my heart hurts from throwing out homemade yogurt, pork jowl, beef tenderloin, homemade chicken broth, and all manner of other items that I was planning to use over the next few weeks.

Luckily, I had pie to comfort me.

The crust was made just like a basic butter pastry crust, but I subbed plain yogurt for water, at Rose Levy Berenbaum’s suggestion. I can see why she recommended it–the tangy flavor of the crust does complement the tartness of the lime filling, but 1) it was a devil to work with, cracking all over creation, and 2) I missed the stage-center flavor of butter, which in this crust is masked slightly by the yogurt.

In all fairness, I used another type of flour, so that could have contributed to the difficulty I had keeping the dough in one piece. On a whim, I decided to use self-rising White Lily flour that I found at a local grocery store in the area (Sendik’s, for those of you who live in Milwaukee). It’s a bleached white flour with leavener added. I understand it’s very popular in the South. Since I usually add 1/8 teaspoon baking powder to my crusts, I thought, why not? But it feels very soft. Almost cake flour soft, so it might not work out for me.

The filling was dreamy. It was actually supposed to be a lemon pucker pie from Berenbaum’s Pie and Pastry Bible, but since I had an overabundance of limes from our Casa de Collett Margarita Party (the best margaritas in the Midwest!), limes it was going to be!

I started by making a lime curd*. Then I made a stiff meringue*. Then I folded the curd into the meringue (I keep wanting to spell merengue! Let’s dance!). Voilá! Filling done. I dumped it into my fully pre-baked pie crust, and into the oven it went for about 20 minutes until the top was golden. It was actually half golden, and half light brown, because my oven is terribly uneven and I forgot to turn it 10 minutes in. But it was still pretty… until I cut into it. That meringue-curd filling stuck to the knife no matter what I did!

But I still ate it. So did my colleagues. Pucker up, buttercup.

* Note: these are not the recipes I used, but they’re close and will serve you well if you want to try them.